


what caused the wound, how large the teeth?

by buckybunnyteeth



Category: Leverage
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Imagined Character Deaths, Not Really Character Death, Other, Past Violence, Rated For Violence, Season/Series 03, imaginary violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-27
Updated: 2018-09-27
Packaged: 2019-07-18 04:16:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16110617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckybunnyteeth/pseuds/buckybunnyteeth
Summary: “I’m giving you one chance.”Heels stop mid click at the other end of the alley. These kinds of things always take place in alleys. These kinds of showdowns.Eliot and the Italian have a word after she gives Nate his ultimatum. Eliot has other ideas.





	what caused the wound, how large the teeth?

**Author's Note:**

> the violence is just eliot imaging what Moreau would do to his team if he caught them.

"What you will know of me is the shadow of the arrow that has pierced its target."

\- Clarice Lispector, from The Stream of Life

 

“I’m giving you one chance.”

Heels stop mid click at the other end of the alley. These kinds of things always take place in alleys. These kinds of showdowns.

“One chance,” he says softly into the dark, “Drop the deal you have with Nate and leave. Now.”

 When the Italian turns to face him, she is smiling. Smiling the way, a fox smiles when it finds the weak spot into the hen house. It's not a feature that makes her more beautiful, not the kind of soft smile Sophie dose to make people feel more comfortable. It’s a snake’s smile.

“Eliot Spencer,” she says his full name in the night dark alley like it’s a ward against how much hurt he could bring on her, like it would stop him, “I should have guessed you would seek me out.”

“You did.”

Her smile widens a fraction at the corners.

“I did.”

Eliot steps closer, calculating his footfalls against the slick surface of the cobbled stones beneath his feet. They are barely a block from McRory’s. this meeting is dangerous, in more ways than one.

She doesn’t step back. Most people step back. She doesn’t even move.

“I won’t let them go after Moreau,” he growls, “He’ll kill them. He’s a monster.”

“A monster that needs slaying,” she counters, her cool unbroken, “You know better than most how true that is.”

“Then get a sniper to blow his head off the next time he sets foot in the country,” he says through clenched teeth, “That’s how you take out Moreau.”

“Alright,” she shrugs, “How much are you charging for your services?”

Eliot feels his heart stop in his chest.

He can picture it. Laying down flat next to a rifle on a rooftop a kilometer from the private airport Moreau would land at. Can picture following his head through the scope before he breathes out, gently squeezes the trigger, and the evillest man he has ever met becomes red jelly on the tarmac.

He can see Moreau turning to him and looking at his down the scope, smirking, smiling that crocodile smile. The same smile he wore all those years ago when Eliot was the first person to ever tell him no and he got his revenge by going after Eliot's flesh and blood.

His hand shakes at the thought and he has to squeeze it into a fist to make it stop.

“I don’t like guns.”

The Italian nods.

“Killing Moreau would create a vacuum, Mr. Spencer,” she says smoothly, “More evil men would fill his place in a much more dysfunctional way. Armatures can do all kinds of damage.”

Eliot knows that well, so he nods.

“Justice, breaking him,” her smirk doesn’t shift but something lights up in her eyes, the same light he’s seen in Nates eyes, “That would plug the hole. Show the world that not even Damien Moreau can escape justice, not even the King of Crime can avoid the chains he had earned through his misdeeds- that is a weapon more effective than any rifle. Than any bullet.”

“Fine,” he growls, “Do it yourself, leave my team out of this.” 

“I can’t,” She shrugs, like they are discussing the weather or something, “I have tried through many ways to get him- the CIA, the FBI, MI6, and many many others that only people like you and I would know the names of. He has sent back bodies, every time. I do not need agents, I need someone who thinks differently. I need the team that has toppled more fortune five hundred companies in the last year than bankruptcy and corporate espionage have put together. I need Nate Fords team.”

“They have no idea what you are dropping them into,” he gestures angrily, “They think he’s just a fucking bank, just a terrorist money launderer. They have no idea what he has done, what he will do to them!”

The images come to Eliot’s mind unbidden. The images he has been keeping at bay since Nate walked in a said ‘Damien Moreau’ so casually, and sent a bolt of cold lighting down Eliot’s spine.

Nate’s death from a single shot to the head because he always gets to close.

Sophie perforated by bullet holes because she always runs after Nate, and Moreau keeps his men to well-armed and too ruthless to keep a woman standing.

Hardison, gasping for breath as blood bubbles up out of his mouth form the sucking wounds in his chest, his fingers broken and cut off because Moreau likes his poetry.

Parker bruised and broken, purpled and on her knees before Moreau as he gave her one last chance, ‘join or die’, and the way she would smirk through split open lips as she tells him to go fuck himself. The way her body would fall lifelessly next to Hardisons. He can’t imagine them dying apart. Can imagine still being alive to see it.

This image of their hands falling side by side, not close enough to hold each other as the life slips out of them. He’s been fighting that image in his nightmares since they took down Dubenich.

He doesn’t know what would happen to him. Moreau would either kill him first or send thugs at him so he couldn’t get to him in time. And then, when he came in and saw them all dead, he would kill as many of them as he could to try and get to Moreau to rip his head off.

He would never make it.

“You could help them see otherwise,” the Italian says, snapping him out of his blood-soaked thoughts, “There is no one outside Moreau’s organization who knows him as well as you.”

“I didn’t get to know him by choice,” he growls, fingers flexing with the need to knock the teeth out of something.

“I know. You were Airforce, worked in Cheyenne Mountain in a program that is above even my clearance level. Then the CIA took you and gave you to whoever they wished for whatever was needed. And one of them was Moreau.”

Eliot’s lips twist up into a snarl. He doesn’t need to be told his own history like it was an X-men’s backstory instead of decades of triumph, and then hell.

“I have no idea how you convinced him to let you go,” her cold shark's eyes asses him, “form all accounts, you were his favourite.”

 _How did you do it?_ Floats between them

It’s a question and the answer he has is twofold.

It was the last time he had used a gun.

“The CIA wanted me back.”

Her expression doesn’t change. She’s not convinced, but she won’t ask again.

“Nathan Ford will take down Moreau,” she says with finality, “Or he will go back to Jail. That is the deal.”

Eliot runs his hands through his hair, a moment of weakness and a nervous tick.

“Fine!” he spits, “But I’m not going to help him do it. We’ll get you records or bank transfers or something to take him down and then you can do the rest. I am not letting any of my people set foot in the same town that Moreau is in.”

He steps closer to her, so close their noses practically touch, and looks at her with the coldest expression he has.

“And if he hurts any of them,” he says in a near whisper, “I’ll find you. And it won’t be pretty.”

The Italian isn’t rattled by his threats. He didn’t expect her to be.

“You have six months,” she says smoothly, stepping around him to walk out of the alley, “You’d best work quickly Mr. Spencer. I don’t think you will be able to hide your spotted past for long.”

She turns back and her smirk is self-amused.

“Or is it your bleeding heart?”

And then she is gone in a cloud of rising steam and with no sound at all.

Eliot stays in the alley until his hands stop shaking.

The worst thing he ever did in his life he did for Moreau.

But there are other horrible things he would do for the people he loves.

He walks back to McRory’s and promises himself that he will not live to see Parker and Hardison die side by side. He’ll pick up a gun first.

**Author's Note:**

> I have this whole mental mythology about Eliot and his past, so I used some of it here. 
> 
> I am sort of writing this as an escape from grief so yeah. Hope you like it!
> 
> also, if you picked up on the stargate reference and you know the story behind it I love you forever.


End file.
